Monday, December 30, 2013

Christmas! Half Way Mark! And the Work Continues...

December 30, 2013

Familia,

You know what? It was honestly the best
Christmas I’ve ever had. Itdidn’t matter
that there were no packages or presents or that I wasthousands of miles from home. I could not have had a
better experienceand there is no place I
would have rather been for my Christmas thisyear.

It started Tuesday night when we knew
we wouldn’t be able tohave any appointments
because just about everyone was out drinking or lighting fireworks. So, we decided to use the opportunity to find newpeople to teach. The bright idea: Caroling. The
six of us (our awesomedistrict) went all
over our area singing together. If we came to ahouse where they weren’t drinking, we automatically knew it was agolden family.

One problem, caroling does NOT exist in Peru.
Everyonethought we were crazy: like the
people in the Pharmacy that we walked into
or the people on the bus that we randomly decided to hop on. In the end, we did get some good contacts and have a list
of people to try tovisit this week.

Wednesday morning, the zone got together to
go play soccer on somerandom farm. It
was actually a lot of fun! And, I didn’t break anyarms, so that’s a plus JThere was some lady
walking by and good notresist the
site of some crazy Christmas morning multi-ethnicity soccergame in the rain and watched the WHOLE thing. She was
yelling andscreaming and enjoying every
moment.

Then came the Skyping part. OnceI actually got logged in and saw that it was
going to work, I lovedevery moment of
it. For just a moment, my whole family was here inIquitos with me. That’s the best present I could have
had.

After that,a few Elders invited us to go eat with them in some
American-typeSports Bar Restaurant. The upstairs bar was
reserved for themissionaries….way too
ironic. We laughed a lot together as we talkedabout the experiences we’ve had together this transfer and I knew thatI was among family.

Who would of thought that I had such a largefamily from Maine and California to Ecuador,
Guatemala, Chile, etc.? I love watching
how the Gospel of Jesus Christ is some sort of Eternaltie that binds us all together no matter where we go.

We had our Missionary Choir presentation and my
violin playingactually wasn’t that
horrible! That was a talent that I never believedwould be such an advantage in my mission. Now, if I
can just find agood use out of running,
I will be one happy little Hermana!

As far as Hump Day (HALF WAY DONE!) goes, I
really didn’t do anything. I wasn’t up toburning
anything or ordering Delivery or anything like that. For me,it was just another day in the field and another
reminder that I needto step it up and
give my all because my time here is so incrediblyshort.

Jhuly, a sister we’ve been teaching this month
was Baptized onSaturday and it was
beautiful…and stressful! Her Baptism was to beSaturday at 4, but Saturday morning at 10 our District
Leader calledand told us that our
investigator that’s getting Baptized this nextSaturday needed to have an Interview with President Gómez and that hecould only do it that day at 4, during the
Baptism.

We had to findmembers to do splits with us and I sent my companion
to the baptismand went to the Interview.
I was happily sitting outside ofPresident’s
office thinking about how great it is that Jhuly wasprobably entering the water right then.

I went over to the Churchafter the appointment to get a glimpse of the
end of the Baptism and as my Motokarpulled
up, I saw my companion, almost in tears, standing in front ofsome guy and Jhuly, who was in normal clothes and
perfectly dry.

I gotthere right as my poor companion started to say “I
just want to tellyou that…” and she saw me and said “that this is
my companion HermanaSimonson and she can answer all of your
questions!”

She pushed me infront of her and hid a little bit. The guy that was
there was Jhuly´s ex-boyfriend (he didn’t
take the whole law of chastity thing too well,hence the “ex”) who showed up to tell her that
she was making the biggestmistake of her life and that he would marry her
if she didn’t getbaptized.

He started yelling at me saying that we
couldn’t force herinto anything
and that he would never come to this church of the deviland lots of other fun things like that.

I asked Jhuly if she wanted tobe Baptized and she eagerly responded yes
Normally, I think I wouldhave been able
to handle the situation more tactfully, but I hadalready had a stressful day.

As the boyfriend yelled at me about howI’m from the Devil´s Church, I finally just
said, with the best smileand patience
that I could muster “Brother, I don’t understand what theproblem is will you please just tell us how we can
help you so we canmove on the Baptismal
Service that should have started an hour ago?”

He just kept saying that he didn’t know anything
about the Church andso I cut in trying
to get his address to send the Elders there…hedidn’t like that so much.

“Brother, here’s all you need to know about
the church. It’s the same Church that Jesus
Christ himself establishedwhen he walked
the earth, restored by the Prophet Joseph Smith and isthe only true church that exists and Jhuly has chosen
to be baptizedbecause she knows it’s the
only thing that can make her completely happy.”

That shut him up for long enough for Jhuly to
walk away andget changed
into her white dress. In the end, the service wasbeautiful and, you know what, the boyfriend finally
gave in andentered the chapel to watch.

There’s never an easy baptism, but eachone is so incredibly worth it. No matter how
hard it is for me to get the courage to
testify, “even in opposition” like my setting apart blessing says, “it has never led me astray”.